image storing and displaying (struts2 + hibernate)

[Nemanja Kovacevic]

I'm new on this forum so first I would like to greet you all.

I'm bulding struts2 + hibernate + tomcat application and now I have a problem.

Users should be able to upload their photos and later that photos should be visible on their profile page.

Uploading a file in struts2 is , as we all now, super easy so I find myself with a File object in my Action class.

What should I do next? My first idea was to store a file on images folder in my web app root so I can easily reference it from html later but I can't find path for that. Second idea is to put it in database as blob or something but how to display it later?

Any ideas, examples? It's a bit surprising for me that googling didn't provide any answers because it seems like a common scenario...

[David Newton]

I'm not a big fan of storing images in the DB, but it'd work. I prefer to keep them in a non-web-app directory. In Struts 2 they can be served back using the "stream" result.

What exactly are you having problems with?

[Nemanja Kovacevic]

I'm trying both solutions but I can't get them to work.

OK, I get a File object from FileUploaderInterceptor and I can open an InputStream and read those bytes. Now I can create an OutputStream and write those bytes to a file on my server. I would very much like to create that image file in my webapp/images folder, so I can referense it from html. But I can't get to that path in Tomcat, all I can get is Tomcat temp dir and I can't store my images in a temp dir. You say you prefer to keep them in a non-web-app directory, do you meen like on C:/images? If so, how can I refernce them from html later? Or should I create a JSP page with action tag that has stream result and returns my image? If so where to put my image files?

Thanks for your effort.

[Nemanja Kovacevic]

As for db variant, I can't get the file to save to DB.

my Image class:

public class Slika implements Serializable{

long id;
Blob blob;

public Blob getBlob() {
return blob;
}

public void setBlob(Blob blob) {
this.blob = blob;
}

public long getId() {
return id;
}

public void setId(long id) {
this.id = id;
}

}

hibernate maping:

    
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-mapping>
  <class name="util.Slika" table="slike">
    <id column="id" name="id" type="java.lang.Long">
      <generator class="increment"/>
    </id>
    <property name="blob" type="blob"/>
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

and test action code:

    
        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(slika);
        Blob blob = Hibernate.createBlob(fis);
        fis.close();

        Slika s = new Slika();
        s.setBlob(blob);

        HibernateUtil.getSession().save(s);         

        HibernateUtil.commitTransaction();

There is no exception, Hibernate logs insert statment but no row in DB?

[Nemanja Kovacevic]

UPDATE:

Now I can successfully sotre and retrieve my image from DB and even display it from struts action.

Action code:

    
public class PrikazSlike extends ActionSupport {

    public String execute() throws Exception{

        Slika slika = (Slika) HibernateUtil.getSession().load(Slika.class, new Long(1));

        HttpServletResponse response = ServletActionContext.getResponse();
        response.setContentType("image/jpg");
        OutputStream out = response.getOutputStream();

        out.write(slika.getBytes());

        return null;

    }
}

As a result I get a picture displayed in my browser. But I need to include that image in other content. Now I'm trying to to that.

[David Newton]

You'll want to ask Hibernate-related questions in the ORM forum.

[Nemanja Kovacevic]

the answer is to call your action as a resource from html img tag

like this

<img src="/WebApplication_1/administrator/PrikazSlike.action" />

working with previous action code this will inject image on your web page